Post on 29-Mar-2020
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A journal for restless minds
Made For Heaven Born of this earth
A Family Affair
So all may be one
June 09, 2017 Vol 02, No 03
Colloquī is a Deacon’s Corner
weekly journal. Its mission and
purpose: to encourage serious
discussion, to promote reasoned
debate, and to provide serious
content for those who hope to
find their own pathway to God.
Each week Colloquī will contain
articles on theology, philoso-
phy, faith, religion, Catholicism,
and much more.
Be forewarned! Articles may
and often will contain fuel for
controversy, but always with
the express intent to seek the
Truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help us
God.
Made For Heaven Born of this earth
O ur nature, the who and
what which constitutes the
human person, has long
been much debated by
philosophers, metaphysicists, psycholo-
gists—and more often
than one might sus-
pect—charlatans.
Each—far too eager to
suggest as much—
claims to have in their
possession the illusory
answer; their theories
all too fickle and quite
as fleeting as those for
which they somberly
conclude and denounce as fallacious,
even heretical.
Perhaps a few have captured some
near equivalence, some expression
which approximates the human condi-
tion. And yet, for all their eloquence of
speech and professed profundity, it is
this simple phrase which turns them all
to common clay: “We are creatures made
for heaven, but we are born of this earth.”1
God formed man from common clay;
from the earth he loved man into exist-
ence. But such a form left to itself is but
an image, nothing but a caricature, a pro-
totype; whole, yet soddenly incomplete,
like a clay pot not yet put to flame.
No doubt, given sufficiency of time
and man’s hubristic conceit, man will
replicate a caricature of
himself. But man has
neither the capacity nor
love enough to create
the whole, to cause into
being the eternal es-
sence of a soul which
makes the manufac-
tured caricature com-
plete, the person whole.
T here is a fallacy of mind, perpet-
uated by those who have fully
convinced themselves of having
correctly answered the unanswerable,
such as: “Which came first, the chicken or
the egg?” Notwithstanding the irreconcil-
able opinions they express, there are
mysteries and imponderables, limits and
barriers which cannot, will not, nor are
not solvable deterministically. Such an-
swers are known by God alone.
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I t is hubris—extreme, foolish
pride—which defies nature’s
norms and dares to challenge the
creative power of God; it is the ego
which convicts the mind, making unto
itself a god; it is pride which lies at the
center of sin and immorality.
“Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness,
and all that, are mere fleabites in compari-
son: it was through Pride that the devil
became the devil: Pride leads to every other
vice: it is the complete anti-God state of
mind.”2
Pride is what has turned our un-
derstanding of creation on its head,
placing effect before its cause. We see
the body and presume the soul a mere
superfluous adjunct, an impractical,
improbable artifact, or egregious reli-
gious nonsense. It is, in his presump-
tiveness, that man has proved himself
to be the biggest fool. And yet fools
though they are, their pride and their
conceit provide no honest exit from
their foolishness.
We read “then the Lord God formed
man of dust from the ground, ... ” (Gen
2:7). This is neither meaningless tripe
to be ignored nor nonsense to be impe-
riously dismissed.
The manufactured man was
formed from dust, and had God pro-
ceeded no further, what would have
been his fortune? At best or worst,
man was then but a caricature, a stat-
ue, a lifeless mass, a clod of dirt too
easily reshaped by some wandering
breeze or pleasant shower; a castle
crafted out of sand, whose carefully
carved turrets and sturdy walls look to
be impervious to assault, are so quick-
ly erased with the rising tide, no trace
of the craftsman’s artistry left behind.
Is that then to be the fate of man?
A random amalgam of uncertain
shape and nothing more? It takes no
genius to state the obvious: man is
more than common clay, so much
more than dust rolling aimlessly upon
the ground at the mercies of the wind.
If we but read a few words more
we find that the Lord God then “…
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living being.” More
than simple potter’s clay shaped by the
One Potter of all that was, is, and ever
shall be; the Potter breathed into his
creation the essence of His being; He
gave him life from lifelessness, His life,
His being, His image and likeness.
God caused man into existence not by
merely forming him from dust but
through the giving of what was His
alone to give, God gave of himself.
Saint John Paul II once said that there
is something in every human being
that “mirrors the image of God as Crea-
tor.”3
That which makes man a living
being is from God, of God, and is God.
God made us to live with him forever
in heaven, but he made us from the
dust of this earth. We are born of earth
but not for earth, for God’s purpose in
creating us has always been to live
with him in heaven.
O ur body is of this earth, our
spirit of heaven. While our
body longs for the beauty
that is of this earth, our spirit senses
something more, longs for something
outside ourselves, something other-
worldly, unseen, and unknowable, yet
far more beautiful than what we might
experience in our brief earthly sojourn.
B ut then our pride gets in the
way. We seem incapable of
leaving well enough alone.
We know better but then “Pride goes
before destruction, and a haughty spirit
before a fall” (Prov 16:18).
C. S. Lewis says of pride “Now
what you want to get clear is that Pride is
essentially competitive—is competitive by
its very nature—while the other vices are
competitive only, so to speak, by accident.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having some-
thing, only out of having more of it than
the next man.”4
He goes on to note: “The Christians
are right: it is Pride which has been the
chief cause of misery in every nation and
every family since the world began. Other
vices may sometimes bring people together:
you may find good fellowship and jokes
and friendliness among drunken people or
unchaste people. But pride always means
enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmi-
ty between man and man, but enmity to
God.”5
As much as we love the beauty of
this world and the universe which sur-
rounds it, we seem to instinctually
want to create our own beauty and
new life which is the sole domain of
our own creator God. And in many
ways—perhaps in too many ways—
we have achieved much in this regard.
“We live in a time when, despite all of
our achievements, the brutality and in-
difference of the world have never been
greater. And that cruelty is also the work
of human hands. So if we’re troubled by
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the spirit of our age, if we want to change
the current course of our culture and chal-
lenge its ruling ideas, then we need to start
with the author of that culture. That
means examining man himself.
Culture exists because man exists.
Men and women think, imagine, believe,
and act. The mark they leave on the world
is what we call culture. In a sense, that
includes everything from work habits and
cuisine to social manners and politics. But
most of us focus in a special way on those
elements of culture that people consciously
choose to create; things like art, literature,
technology, music, and architecture. These
are what most of us think about when we
first hear the word ‘culture.’”6
B ut to the Western mind today,
God has been cast out of the
equation, God is no longer a
part of the cultural milieu. Almost eve-
ry scientific advance comes with its
own retrogression. Science and tech-
nology provide us with power. But
that power creates an ever strident cult
of Pride.
New cruelties permeate entertain-
ment venues; cynicism, spin, and base
degradation abound in politics; not-so-
subtle genocides pose as rights such as
the abortion cult; and the apparent
endless “trans” confusion on what it
truly means to be human.
“Philosophers like Ludwig Feuerbach
and Friedrich Nietzsche give us the lan-
guage to deny God. The result, in the
words of Henri de Lubac, is not atheism,
but an anti-theism built on resentment. In
destroying God, man sees himself as
‘overthrowing an obstacle in order to gain
his freedom.’ The Christian understanding
of human dignity claims that we’re made
in the image and likeness of God. Thomas
Aquinas said that ‘In this [likeness to God]
is man’s greatness, in this is man’s worth,
in this he excels every creature.’ But this
grounding in God is exactly what the
modern spirit rejects as an insult to hu-
man sovereignty.”
Most people will never read Nie-
tzsche or Feuerbach. But they will ex-
perience the benefits of science and
technology; marketing will tease their
appetites, make death seem remote,
and turn morality and meaning into
matters of mere private opinion.
“While many people in the developed
world still claim to be religious, their
faith—in the words of the Pontifical Coun-
cil for Culture—is ‘often more a question
of religious feeling than a demanding com-
mitment to God.’ Religion becomes a kind
of insurance policy for eternity. Too often,
it’s little more than a convenient moral
language for daily life.”
Pride increases the desire for pow-
er and erodes concern for the weak
and vulnerable. “Genius can breed vani-
ty. Vanity breeds conflict. Conflict breeds
suffering. And the vanity of creative geni-
us has a pedigree that leads back a very
long way.”7
I t is odd that in the wake of recent
history, in which millions upon
millions of human lives were
starved, tortured, gassed, shot, blown
apart, and incinerated that so many
are unwilling, even to the point of em-
barrassment, to speak of the devil. Any
mention is intentionally directed to-
ward a being little more than a comic
book character or an implausible yet
flawed human being.
T hat caricature is far from the
truth. Satan is real. He was
vividly real for Jesus. He was
very real for Paul as well as for every
saint throughout history. And, rest
assured, the devil is far more formida-
ble than any human being.
God created angels before he cre-
ated man. They are glorious creatures,
Pure Spirits, without corporeal form.
And Satan was an angel, one of the
greatest of all the angels.
“This is the kind of Being—once glo-
rious, then consumed by his own pride—
who is now the Adversary of humanity.
This is the Pure Spirit who betrayed his
Creator and his own greatness. This is the
Intellect who hates the Incarnation because
through it, God invites creatures of clay
like us humans to take part in God’s own
divinity. There is nothing sympathetic or
noble about Satan; only tragedy and loss
and enduring, incandescent fury.”8
Here’s the rub: If we don’t believe
in the devil, then sooner or later we
will not believe in God. The devil is an
integral part of the salvation narrative.
Satan is neither God nor a god. He is a
creature and subject to God who
waged war against his Creator and
was defeated. He is the first author of
pride. Without the devil, the Incarna-
tion and Redemption would be with-
out meaning. The devil is real. There is
no escape from this simple truth.
1. Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land, (Henry Hold and Co.: February 2017), 227. 2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (HarperOne, 2002), 103. 3. Saint John Paul II, Letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Artists, 1999.. 4. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 104. 5. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 105. 6. Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land, 227. 7. Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land, 229. 8. Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land, 232.
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A Family Affair So that all may be one
W e have heard the
words many times;
so much so that we
seldom really listen
to them anymore. “The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the love of God and the
fellowship of the holy Spirit be with you
all!” And then these words pass by
without much attention: “In the name of
the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit!”
Holy words. Sacred Words. Words
rich in meaning, so profound, yet too
often spoken or heard in absentia, so
ingrained are they in our minds, we
pay little heed to what it is we are say-
ing or hearing.
And then there are those other
things, bothersome notions, rekindling
thoughts and memories
of unpleasant times, un-
savory and unwelcome
bitterness toward a fami-
ly member: perhaps a
tyrannical parent, some-
one who demanded obe-
dience without a simple
touch of love, or one too
distant or absent by their
own admission. These
memories reprise hurtful thoughts.
There are other reasons, to be sure,
why some find it difficult to pray to
the triune God. Times and cultures
have imbued the word “God” with
many and varied meanings—remote,
unfeeling, authoritarian, arbitrary, an-
gry, demanding, caring, wise, peace,
loving, vengeful, righteous, judgmen-
tal, father, mother, ruler, king, Lord—
but for Christians, God is a community
of persons, a family, three persons in
one God, a relationship grounded in
being one with the other. The doctrine
of the Trinity affirms God as loving
and all-knowing, generous in giving,
welcome in receiving. We believe and
profess every time we recite the Creed
that God could not be God without the
Father and the Son eternally bonded in
their relationship through the Holy
Spirit.
While some think of the Trinitari-
an doctrine as somehow a negotiable
which may or may not be held to be
true, it is at its core, the heart and soul
of our faith. As Christians, if we lose
faith in the triune God, we lose all we
are. We cannot call ourselves Chris-
tians if we do not hold fast to the truth
in the Trinity, that is God, the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
T he God of Moses, “merciful and
gracious, slow to anger, rich in
kindness and fidelity,“ is thus
shown through Saint Paul as the inter-
personal Trinity that serves as a true
model of human family relationships.
Thus Paul prays, “The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fel-
lowship of the Spirit be with you all.“
W hat we see in the Trinity
reveals something very
important for all family
relationships. The relationship be-
tween Jesus and the Father is an inti-
mate, self-giving relationship. Every
joy, every pain, every tear, every feel-
ing which the Son experienced was
experienced by the Father and the
Spirit.
This is often difficult for us to ac-
cept. It is a mystery beyond our under-
standing and yet we are called, as
Catholics and as Christians to believe
it without demurral. Gregory Nazian-
zen was a fourth century bishop who
is credited for the final acceptance by
the Council of Constantinople of the
Nicene Creed. In what is called a po-
em, Gregory speaks clearly and elo-
quently of the Trinity.
“To speak of the Godhead is, I know,
like crossing the ocean on a
raft, or like flying to the
stars with winds of narrow
span. Even heavenly beings
are unable to speak of
God’s decrees or of his gov-
ernment of the world.
But enlighten my mind
and loosen my tongue,
Spirit of God, and I will
sound aloud the trumpet of
truth, so that all who are united to God
may rejoice with their whole heart.
There is one eternal God, uncaused
and uncircumscribed by any being exist-
ing before him or yet to be. He is infinite,
and all time is in his hands. He is the
mighty Father of one might and noble Son.
In no way does the birth of this Son resem-
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ble human birth, for God is spirit.
T he Word of God is another divine
Person, but not another Godhead.
He is the living seal of the Father,
the only son of the only God. He is equal to
the Father, so that although the Father
always remains wholly the Father, the Son
is the creator and ruler of the world and is
the Father’s power and wisdom.
Let us praise the Son first of all, ven-
erating the blood that expiated our sins.
He lost nothing of his divinity when he
saved me, when like a good physician he
stooped to my festering wounds.
He was a mortal man, but he was also
God. He was of the race of David, but Ad-
am’s creator. He who has no body clothed
himself with flesh. He had a mother, but
she was a virgin.
He who is without bounds bound him-
self with the cords of our humanity.
He was victim and high priest—yet he
was God. He offered up his blood and
cleansed the whole world. He was lifted up
on the cross, but it was sin that was nailed
to it. He became as one among the dead,
but he rose from the dead, raising to life
also many who had died before him.
On the one hand, there was the pov-
erty of his humanity; on the other, the
riches of his divinity. Do not let what is
human in the Son permit you wrongfully
to detract from what is divine. For the sake
of the divine, hold in the greatest honor the
humanity which the immortal Son took
upon himself for love of you.
My soul, why do you hold back? Sing
praise to the Holy Spirit as well, lest your
words tear asunder what is not separated
by nature. Let us tremble before the great
Spirit who also is God, through whom we
have come to know God, who transforms
us into God.
He is the omnipotent bestower of di-
verse gifts and the giver of life both in
heaven and on earth. He is the divine
strength, proceeding from the Father and
subject to no power. He is not the Son, for
there is only one Son, but he shares equally
in the glory of the Godhead.
In the one God are three pulsations
that move the world. Through them I be-
came a new and different person when I
came out of the font, where my death was
buried, into the light—a man restored to
life from the dead. If God cleansed me so
completely, then I must worship him with
my whole being.”1
Let us take a moment to honestly
consider what it must have been for
God himself to become himself incar-
nate. Imagine all that God must, out of
his love for his creation, have given up
to become man. Who among us would
have so much love as to give up so
much of who you are to become a flea
or a worm or even a tree. So much
more did God give to become man and
walk among us.
A s Paul wrote, “Do nothing
from selfishness or conceit, but
in humility count others better
than yourselves. Let each of you look not
only to his own interest, but also to the
interests of others. Have this in mind
among yourselves, which was in Christ
Jesus, who, though he was in the form of
God, did not count equality with God a
thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being born in
the likeness of men. And being found in
human form he humbled himself and be-
came obedient unto death, even death on a
cross. Therefore God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name which
is above every name, that at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, and eve-
ry tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”2
Think of how God made himself
incarnate, was born of a human wom-
an, who took the Lord to her breast
and suckled him there. Think of all
those who were so fortunate to have
encountered God incarnate: the be-
loved Apostle John who reclined his
head on the bosom of the Lord, the
woman who washed his feet with her
tears, the blind man whom Jesus
wiped mud on his eyes so he could
see. How would you have liked to be
among those so favored by God’s hu-
man presence?
It is good that God became man
and thus entered into human history.
But all history is local, circumscribed
by time and place. While God, the Fa-
ther, Son, and Spirit exists outside of
time, he is present then, now, and yet
to come. We know that he is fully pre-
sent with us now and forever, here
and wherever we may go.
Amen.
Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (A)
Exodus 34:4B-6, 8-9 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
John 3:16-18
1. Gregory Nazianzen, Poem 1-3: PG 37, 397-411. 2. Philippians 2:3-11.
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Deacon Chuck Lanham is an
author, columnist, speaker, and a
servant of God.
He is the author of The Voices of
God: Hearing God in the Silence, Echoes of Love: Effervescent
Memories and is currently writing
his third book Without God: Finding
God in a Godless World.
He is the bulletin editor for Saint
Albert the Great Catholic Church.
He has written over 230 articles on
religion, faith, morality, theology,
Deacon’s Corner Publishing 4742 Cougar Creek Trail
Reno, Nevada 89519
Books are available on Amazon.com or from the author’s web site at:
deaconscorner.org
Each issue of Colloquī can be viewed or downloaded from
http://deaconscorner.org.
Deacon Chuck can be contacted thru email at
deacon.chuck@deaconscorner.org
Colloquī is a weekly publication of Deacon’s Corner Publishing.
Copyright © 2016 by Deacon’s Corner Publishing. All rights reserved.
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